


Arch

by AvianInk



Series: When the Past Comes Back [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bathroom Sex, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Flashback, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Oral Sex, POV Natasha Romanov, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 16:41:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18529006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvianInk/pseuds/AvianInk
Summary: A continuation of "Closed Doors," wherein a flashback leaves Natasha shaken, but nonetheless resilient. Bruce remains gentle with her through the resistance of that which haunts her.





	Arch

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: sexual assault within the fic's flashback. Please read on at your own discretion.
> 
> Hey lovely people. Before diving into this piece, I wanted to assure that I crafted this narrative and its events with nothing but respect and understanding, and I apologize now if that doesn't come across for anyone. Surviving sexual assault is tremendously difficult, and it is absolutely normal and okay to experience flashbacks and feel triggered. It's okay to experience these things and not want to engage in sexual activity afterward. It's okay to experience a flashback, take a moment, and continue at your own pace. How you cope is absolutely valid, please know that.

It’s utterly gentle how he has her pressed against the dresser. His kiss embraces her with more pressure than his hands cupping her face, more than his hips tilted into her. She’s enjoying their position, this foreplay of teasing nips, her tidal wave of touch over his bare torso, their tangled tongues. She melts into the wood, slouches into him when he dives down her neck and fastens onto the skin just above the collar of her shirt—technically his shirt. He might think himself clever—which he is—or sneaky—which he isn’t—when he moves his hands to the hem, inches the fabric up. The tongue now teasing her clavicle is almost enough to convince her, but acquiescing now would be a lot less fun.

She seizes his hands in hers and leans down to capture his mouth. His palms slide into her grip, their fingers interlace, and their lips meld in a slow dance. Fixed between him and the dresser, she remains, kisses lazy and long, her thighs where their joined hands rest. A grin tips onto her mouth when his thumb strokes the pillow of skin near her underwear.

It doesn’t make sense when the flashback hits her. She’s safe, she’s settled, yet it rams into her.

Too many tongues slither onto her skin. There’s her body and a horde of snakes clambering onto her, over her. They make her a burial ground, except she is still breathing. Her lungs are painfully functional and, without even blinking, she is back in the Red Room.

“Nat?”

His voice, along with the entirety of the present, stir in the back of her skull, all under gelatin with leeches suspended in it. Everything in front of her is a cursed crimson with a bleeding teenage corpse strewn across a mattress of nails. Fixating on the destruction itself is better than the images of the trauma inflicted against her, what she feels happening to her. The men allowed into the room, allowed access to her without her say, revoking possession of her own limbs—

“Natasha.”

Then she’s back. With questioning fingers brushed against her cheek, Bruce’s arms sturdy under her palms, she’s out of the red.

He folds a hand so his knuckles rest on her cheekbone. All of him is a support for her. She’s slumped further down the dresser, crouched halfway between standing and sitting on the floor. He’s right there with her.

“You’re here. Nat,” he murmurs, “I’m here.”

“I’m gonna…”

She doesn’t need to finish for him to know. “Yeah.”

He slides his arms back until both her palms cover his. He waits for her to latch on, then tugs both of them upright. There’s a threat of wobble in her legs, which she refuses. She will stay on her own feet. This is her body, and she will use it how she pleases. In this moment, that means walking to the bathroom and into the shower.

When Bruce pauses in the doorway as she enters, her stomach drops into fast nausea.  _ Come with me.  _ Her tongue won’t accept the words. Her throat is thick with suppression, gagged by the past. She reaches for Bruce and he’s at her side, in her grasp, in an instant. What’s supposed to happen next seems so obvious and, yet, she can’t find the will to do it.

The two of them linger on the tiles, joined palms like a liferaft, adrift toward an endless horizon. Who knows where she’ll sink if she lets go, if she’s left to tread in the dark depths of history too long.

It’s time likes this when Bruce steps in, does what she needs without hearing her verbalize it. There are other ways to speak.

For a few moments—less than fifty seconds—he relinquishes her touch, traverses over to the shower and turns it on. As the water warms, they wait. His shirt on her is a safety net; if she really wanted to—and she does—she’d shower with it on, and he’d have no qualms. She wouldn’t have gotten this far in life without pushing herself, though. She strips.

The shirt lifts and sinks to the floor in a parachute of navy blue fabric. Her underwear follows, and so does Bruce’s pants, his boxers. He looks to her for a signal, any direction. In response to the tiny nod she gives, he steps in, paving a path for her.

As soon as she enters, hot water hits her magma skin and, somewhere between, it becomes steam; it beckons the old infection out of her skin. The toxins seep out, the present replaces them. Bruce is right in front of her.

The phantoms of fingers stick to her skin like tiny spiders. She scrubs at her arms and stomach, swiping away rivulets of water and invasion. In here, in this square of a space dedicated to cleansing, she permits herself this outward rebellion against her memories.

“Nat. Nat.” Bruce murmurs. His touch whispers over her, brushes onto her jaw. She breathes, refocuses. Water, which rivals her burning skin in temperature, thickens the air with steam. Her pores sigh into the damp, her hair slicks into a wet sheet. Bruce cradles her face as the showerhead rains around them, splatters soft onto the glass barrier. He said her name and she holds it as an echo in her ears. He’s with her in one of the two spaces in the world where being viscerally herself is the default. He’s as there as she is.

She lifts her hands from herself to cover his, press them more firmly into her. Her head tilts forward, bowing ever so slightly into the space between them. It’s something she does out of instinct rather than thought or intention, but he nudges in the next second and strokes her crown with a kiss.

“You’re here. I’m right here with you.” He assures into her skull.

“I know,” she tells him.

“Whatever you need—whatever you want me to do—”

She lifts her mouth to meet his, not to quiet him but because this is what she wants: the person she loves, trusts, whose resonance matches hers, as close to her as possible. She wants his love beating right beside her heart. She wants him loud and utterly himself with her when she blocks out the rest of the world with her walls. He is the quintessence of what she wasn’t supposed to have.

She clutches him to her like he’s an oxygen mask, kisses him as though they’re raising a mountain together and not even the shower spray can get between them. He gives right back, melding into her mouth without overwhelming her whole body.

When they part to breathe something other than each other, he asks, “How are you feeling?”

They’re barely apart, so her noses brushes against him when she nods. “Better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to get the water?” He gestures behind her to the shower handle with a flick of his eyes.

She nods and he cuts the spray. Emerging from the shower is easy—it’s existing beyond the bathroom she’s not prepared for.

He gets a towel for her before himself. She constricts her chest with the cotton, eliminates the nooks and crannies where shadows of the past can haunt her. As she stands there suppressing, Bruce bends down and retrieves his shirt from the floor. It’s a tranquil offering he holds out to her, which she gladly accepts. The scent of their detergent gusts over her when she tugs it on, trades the towel for the swath of him. While she does that, he slides back into his boxers, maybe his pajama pants too.

“Do you want these?”

She turns to see her own underwear held up to her. A glimmer of a grin cracks through the cement that’s settled on her face. Each action slow and steady, she takes the arm extended to her, plucks the fabric from his grasp, tosses it aside, and pulls him to her. She directs his hand to her waist, where he can keep them steady as their mouths press together. They create a gentle ebb and flow, his hands mirroring where hers drift on him.

“I, um—” He pecks her lips before continuing. “I have an idea—if you’re feeling up for anything. It’s okay if you’re…”

“I’m here with you,” she assures. “I’m okay.”

“Okay. Uh,” a sidelong look reveals what he has in mind before he says, “Could you...sit on the counter?”

An eyebrow quirks, more play than critical, but she doesn’t question. A thin layer of condensation makes sliding on effortless. In the interim, Bruce scoots a towel over and positions himself on it, kneeling. It’s second nature, the way her legs part for him.

He deposits a kiss onto her knee, slides his hands over her calves. When he looks up at her, his full eyes and lingering creases of concern in his face are nothing except loving. “If something doesn’t feel right, or you get another flashback—”

“I’ll let you know.” She promises, passing her fingers through his short curls.

He nudges his nose where he’d kissed her, lets her maneuver however she wants in the meantime. Knowing this part well, she drapes one leg over his shoulder and leaves the other propped against the cabinets below. Her hands don’t wander far from his head, which migrates toward her crux, a butterfly trail of kisses and the stroking of his fingers.

The warmth of his breath breezes through her lower hairs, coasts over her folds. She settles into his touch and trusts him to make her melt.

With the leftover moisture from the shower, he could enter her with a two fingers and she’d have no issue. It wouldn’t be him, wouldn’t be his typical touch, if he jumped to that without her asking. He dips into the damp with his tongue, eases her into the thaw. Out of the shape of her, he finds art, tracing her in a slow, fluid motion. An arm curls around her thigh, lighting scrapes up the taut skin on her hip, then slides back down. When he widens her part, he applies a slight pressure, just enough to spark the right nerves and get her to sigh the ghost of a moan.

She arrives fully into the present on blissful tides, his mouth wading around her, replacing the shower’s wet with her own. When he attends to her clit, he starts with a tease of tongue before a full embrace. She could cry from the softness of it. Instead, she hooks onto his hair, encourages him on.

He shimmers and flicks her clit, obeys the hand telling him to give more, and adds a finger to the mix. A firm tip drags through her damp, leaving more in its wake. Worship replaces the feeling of cursed.

Her orgasm happens quietly, with a gradual increase in his tongue’s pace combined with the coaxing of her G-spot. Sighs elevate into gentle moans as her thighs quiver from this blissful undoing. This time, when she’s unmade, it’s entirely with her consent. Reconstruction happens in the aftermath, where she doesn’t desire his shirt on her, but Bruce himself.

Once he removes his finger, she tugs the sole piece of clothing off her body and drops it on his head. He startles, and his lips stumble across her folds. Without removing it, he rises, meets her with a grin as she takes the fabric off his skull and sets it on the counter. Before either can say anything, they’re kissing. The tang of her slides from his mouth to hers, mingles between them like sweet oxygen. For some span of precious time, they stand, bodies pressed close, and simply kiss.

Want of him lingers in her core like an itch not properly scratched. Loath as she is to pull away from his kiss, she does so to see what he’s willing to give. “Bruce—”

He responds with minor surprise, sans condescension or judgement. “More?” To her nod, he coasts his hands over her thighs, one on either side of him, and asks, “Do you want fingers or…”

“Fingers.” Though he doesn’t feel hard—and she absolutely won’t apologize for what she feels—the receding wake of her flashback compels her to add, “I don’t think I could—”

He crashes into her before she can venture down the spiral. His fervor has him tugging her closer to the counter’s edge, her legs clamping tighter, both of them caught mid-exhale. When air becomes necessity, they part and he tells her, “You don’t need to justify anything. Not to me.”

This time, it’s her who pulls him in. Their lips meet and melt, and she’s indomitable inside this haven and out. It’s her who takes his hand and directs it over her body, her muscle, her skin. What she wants is him and her, him knowing how to touch her, her loving with him here and now. He senses this and listens. His hand cups her crux, her fingers feathery on his wrist, and he swirls through her damp heat.

She migrates two fingers to her clit and, with just light pressure, her spine shudders and bows. Their heads knock together, her thighs tremble and he adjusts one of her legs in an effort to hook her more firmly to him. The same digit teases her entrance while, elsewhere, his hand wanders, cherishes. Subtle sparks under her skin follow his touch up her hips, her waist, her brief collection of scars, her ribcage. When he cups her breast, squeezes light, in just the right way, his finger plunges in and she’s ascending toward a euphoric peak.

He strokes into her, shows her how even the inside of her can be caressed. The circles she presses into herself start regular, have her humming from her throat to her core, but the pattern crumbles into erratic movements as he increases his pace. Keeping her legs up around him is both a challenge and the only option. She clings to his hair, goes to kiss him but he eludes her. He sucks on her neck’s pulse point, makes her veins feel like they’re a lava flow.

Just as her trembles turn to quakes, he retracts his one finger and quickly returns with two. She can’t help but emit an, “ _ Oh _ —”

Then he’s at her ear, scraping with his teeth, and the only recourse in the world is to kiss him, the only sensation is a pleasure that overwhelms the senses, has her shaking. He thumps into her through it all.

When orgasm hits, it crashes into her. Her back arches as she moans into his open mouth. His palm on her breast gets caught between them, which he doesn’t seem to mind. Even if he did, there’s not much he can do as she comes, vibrating around him and his fingers within her.

Everything’s as she left it when she returns to her normal state, minus the trembling in her panted breaths. Other than that, Bruce is still between her legs, his mouth dropped to the junction between her neck and shoulder, and she’s sitting on the bathroom counter in the home they share. She’s safe.

She’s also a little tight in the legs—definitely not in other places—and her calves are starting to throb from something other than orgasm-induced pleasure. She kisses the top of his head, then stretches out. His hands lift from where they’ve settled on her thighs. They cup her face as their lips peck, then he reaches for the cotton bundle beside her.

The blue clump gets a smile out of her. “You got your shirt back.”

“Not for long.” He holds it between them without condition.

Before taking it—because his clothes are an offer she can’t refuse, and one he can’t revoke—she slides back onto the floor, onto her own feet. She tells him, “Thank you,” and hopes he recognizes how far that goes. To be sure, she kisses his cheek then, for herself, she pulls him in, wraps her arms around her partner in life and soul and simply exists in the squeeze he reciprocates.

After that, she takes the shirt.


End file.
